6 ms·
This is pretty awful: Before the bill even made it to the House of Lords, you can see the creeping political censorship. In a written statement on 17 January 2
by jjbinx007 4y ago
This is pretty awful:
Before the bill even made it to the House of Lords, you can see the creeping political censorship. In a written statement on 17 January 2023, the government added an amendment that “posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light” should be considered “priority illegal content.”
- Veen 4y agoThey want to crack down on people traffickers advertising their services.
- Rekksu 4y agopresumably they can do that without criminalizing speech
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoThis is still not the way to do it. There are other of methods of law enforcement[0] that don't require any given message to be available for interception. Something like ANOM is more difficult to pull off but it's also less prone to error, which is a more important thing to optimize. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOM
- gjsman-1000 4y agoYes... but how many times can you pull off ANOM? It worked really well once - but by the time there's the 5th, or 6th, or 7th security company that criminals have never heard of and a long string of dead companies, they'll be quite wary.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoI'm sure dedicated people can be more creative than to just do ANOM 7 times but I do get your point. Anyway, I realized after I wrote the comment that ANOM is a bad example for arguing in favor of ubiquitous end-to-end encryption (E2EE). ANOM is only attractive to criminal organizations because other forms of "E2EE" are not resilient to government snooping. It's kind of an interesting point but I do personally land on a preference for ubiquitous E2EE. Ultimately, I suspect the resources of law enforcement would win out given enough creativity from officers but, unfortunately, the current ecosystem does not require them to be creative.
- developer93 4y agoI read an article recently about how easy small boats are to obtain here in Germany, as in the people hiring them out look the other way. They could be made more expensive, or better regulated, and this article was of the opinion that would go a long way to combating that. Because the boats are a one off thing, they can't be retrieved from the UK side.
- ben_w 4y agoHow many traffickers selling overpriced dinghy rides across the Channel advertise within the UK, where the UK law can actually reach? No, that amendment was clearly intended to prevent lefty liberals like me from saying that the asylum seekers themselves are in any way decent or good or deserving of support. Same party used similar language for a thing called "Section 28", so they don't get to pretend they don't know what effect it would have.
- Veen 4y agoThat's not true at all. The Online Safety Bill simply designates as a priority content that breaks an existing prohibition against aiding, abetting, counselling, and conspiring to carry out offenses under the Immigration Act 1971. Lefty open-borders types can continue to say what they like. The connection to section 28 is spurious and deserves no rebuttal. The two things have nothing to do with each other.
- flir 4y ago> an existing prohibition against aiding, abetting, counselling, and conspiring to carry out offenses under the Immigration Act 1971 I could believe that's a thing (although I'd appreciate a reference if you've got it). I couldn't, however, believe "posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light" counts as any of those things.
- Veen 4y ago> We will also add section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to the priority offences list in schedule 7. Although the offences in section 24 cannot be carried out online, paragraph 33 of the schedule states that priority illegal content includes the inchoate offences relating to the offences that are listed. Therefore, aiding, abetting, counselling, conspiring etc. those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light could be an offence that is committed online and therefore falls within what is priority illegal content. The result of this amendment would therefore be that platforms would have to proactively remove that content. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-01-17/debates/23011748000005/OnlineSafetyBill https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-01-17/debates/230...
- developer93 4y agoWhat happened to good old infiltration? Or put a bounty on traffickers. Trade passports or permanent residence for information leading to an arrest.
- philjohn 4y agoOpen up safe legal routes then, the lack of which is the main reason why the boat smugglers even have a business. But doing so would get asylum seekers out of the collective conciousness, which has been politically advantageous to the incumbent party.
- Veen 4y agoI don't see how it has been advantageous to the incumbent party since they have conspicuously failed to prevent the problem.
- themitigating 4y agoIf they fix the problem that removes a reason to vote for them.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoIn several places in the world, the local Conservative party incites / leverages "fear of the other" to the mainstream. If the problem were to either be fixed or go away, they would lose major, major recruiting impetus. I'm not necessarily interested in following through the more tenuous links. But illegal immigrants are an absolute boom to Conservative parties. It's a recruitment, it's a distraction, it's an effective and frequent emotional lever.
- LarryMullins 4y agoIf only the UK had some sort of naval tradition and could send their own ships into the channel to enforce the UK's will, rather than trying to fix the problem by arresting people for saying shit online. Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the... net. Britons will never be... Hmm, this song will need a lot of changes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoThey also want to crack down on crack, but talking positively about crack is not illegal
- heywherelogingo 4y agoThe traffickers aren't in the UK.
- msla 4y agoCan't show people escaping the UK, I suppose.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mnw21cam 4y agoSo once this is enacted, I get to call the police next time I see an advert for P&O Ferries. Sensible.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoLet's just DDoS the government to get them to remove ridiculous laws.
- bagels 4y agoIs this the English Channel which is meant by "channel"?
- Arathorn 4y agoYes. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk-bill-seeks-remove-videos-migrant-crossings-2023-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk-bill-seeks-remove-vi...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- esquivalience 4y agoIs it this quote you mean? Amendment 82, page 10, line 25, at end insert— ‘(3A) Content under subsection (3) includes content that may result in serious harm or death to a child while crossing the English Channel with the aim of entering the United Kingdom in a vessel unsuited or unsafe for those purposes.’ This amendment would require proportionate systems and processes, including removal of content, to be in place to control the access by young people to material which encourages them to undertake dangerous Channel crossings where their lives could be lost.